Man, that ice cream looks good! I'm an ice cream junkie, I could eat the stuff until I explode. You two have really been getting that tandem around, thanks for all the great pictures.

Richardson's has the best ice cream I have ever had. Killer selection of flavors and really rich and tasty. We are most definitely enjoying riding our new tandem. Tandems tend to get a lot of comments, but this one gets more than the usual because it is such a classic looking bicycle. There was a guy we talked to on our ride yesterday who was so excited upon seeing the bike and talking to us about it that he said that we "made his day". Go figure!

__________________
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Ridding the world of derailleurs, one bicycle at a time.

Beautiful bike and scenery. Are all those water bottles full? Seems like a huge amount of liquid to be carrying for an 8 mile ride!

Yes, they were all full. We had originally planned on a longer ride but the weather turned on us so we aborted the ride early. With that said, I would much prefer to have too much water than not enough.

__________________
--
Ridding the world of derailleurs, one bicycle at a time.

Weekend riding continued with Drillium Dude - this time off road. Temps started in the low 70's at 10 am but were approaching the mid-80's when we finished 3 hrs later. Bikes today were my 96 Klein Pulse II and 93 Scott Comp Racing, a Klein Palomino full suspension and a early 90's Trek 930 with cool seat lug treatment.

Toward the end - DD is in a good mood - this is before he almost washed out on two of the final hairpin corners.

Well, this is the final set of pics of my recent Catskill Mtn vacation, during which I had the pleasure of going on some really nice dirt road routes that I had stitched together into routes I'd never done before despite being very familiar with the area. Funny, I grew up in this region but never rode it until recently-- I never thought I could handle, much less enjoy, riding such steep hills, but I've become a hill junkie over the past couple of years and enjoyed these rides immensely. Each of the rides I did this past two weeks averaged over 100ft of elevation gain per mile, the longest of which was a metric century with 6700 ft of elevation gain.

I'm back in Boston now and withdrawing from a cycling high. But at least now I will finally get a chance to read up on and post on all the threads I've missed in the last couple of weeks. But for now, here are some more Catskill mtn pics. Next weekend: D2R2!

Catskill rail trail, mostly flat, and starts in my home village. Great launching point for all my rides. Note the dewey spider webs on the bridge railing:

Another view from the trail, as the morning fog is lifting:

Typical Catskill mtn farm:

More trail:

More farm:

Even more farm:

Paved road connecting the two valley villages of Bloomville and Bovina. This was just after reaching the top of a 2 mile climb with an average 8.5% grade and starting to head down the other side:

An old carriage road that roughly parallels the paved road above. I took this road back:

Wow, great pics southpawboston! It sure looks like great riding there! I considered riding D2R2 this year, but it would have been difficult to get sat. off from work and I'm too cheap to pay to ride.

I rode 46 miles this morning on my Kelly cyclocross. I did about 8 miles on dirt roads. The De Rosa has a slow leak in my Rally rear tire; only lasted 475 miles. I may try to fit it with vitoria pitstop for now, but I'm saving up for a pair of vittoria corsa evo cx. Hopefully next month. Until then I guess I'll give my other bikes a workout.

It was nice to ride on the 32 knobbies in the dirt. Way faster and more comfortable than the 23mm tires I've been using. Slow on the pavement though. I went down a couple of overgrown dirt roads that were once farm roads but now just double track.

Saturday morning I went off into the 80+ degree heat with scozim, three other guys, a Klein Pulse - and no clue!

I haven't been on an MTB since 1992, and that was on DG, so not a whole lot of mountain-climbing there. Anyhow, I had a ball - scared myself on a couple of occasions (as Scott points out in his post above) and thought I was going to die once; my guardian angel stepped in and intervened at the last second so I ended up coming out the other side with everyone else. Never got so much as a scratch the entire day.

Oh - about halfway through, Scott turned us onto a technical ascent. I was running clips/straps and my foot came out and bent a clip back. I lacked the skills to keep my momentum, honestly, so was thinking of walking it. Scott suggested that I continue up the trail the way we were going and we'd meet up once they came down from the technical part. Worked great - I actually had a nice climb and saw 31mph coming back down!

My alternative route:

Hi!

Great scenery:

More great scenery:

I was feeling pretty confident (or arrogant?) by the end of the day - enough to shoot this while descending:

Busy beaver-work:

Last rest stop before the final bombing descent:

Thanks again to Scott for the room and board, pancake breakfast, ham sandwich lunch and an unforgettable experience. I may be crazy, but I want to do it again before the weather turns for the worse!

Took the "new" Fuji on the annual Hot Springs camping trip. Got washed by the rain every night but decent weather by day.Followed the river out of Hot Springs down a mixed gravel/paved road into Tenn. Stoped at the border in a place called painted cliffs, ancient indian art work is supposed to be seen but looked more like modern spray paint graffiti ! Buddy and me had a great time anyway exploring the area.

Loving all the recent pics from you and PG - since I'm now on vacation myself, I hope to be posting with at least half as prolifically as you guys!

Thank you, sir. I sure enjoyed your story and pics about the (ahem) technical ascent. You have more (ahem) guts than I do! And bigger hills to climb.

Actually, what with your pics and those of 3speedslow and JJScaliger and southpawboston, our stand-up-and-shoot pics seem like nothing special, except for the the three bikes of course.

All we did was ride and get wet. Though PG's GPS said we'd done 1000 ft of climbing. After all, this is New England, where one native crop is the short steep hill and even the flatland can be unexpectedly hilly.

__________________Real cyclists use toe clips.
With great bikes comes great responsibility.jimmuller

I was not thinking I'd be able to get out on the bike this weekend because of social commitments but my wife mentioned to me Saturday night that the party we had to attend on sunday was going to start at 4 and it was ok with her if I got in a ride Sunday morning so today I went out by myself and rode up to Snohomish for lunch. The route I chose was mainly on quiet farm roads. The annual "Tour D Peaks ride was going on today and there were a lot of riders out on alot of the same roads I was on but I used the Tolt and Ames lake hills as a detour to get away from the crowds and by the time I popped back into the valley I was all by my lonesome.
The corn is starting to get tall. I like this section of road in late August because the corn encroaches on the road in places and it's like you're riding in a green tunnel.
Sometimes rides present a 'theme to you as it unfolds. Today it was machines. Antique cars, flying Beavers and Bonanzas filled my 100 mile loop

The was some antique car rally going on and I was sharing the roads with these guys:

I am also an airplane geek. Love 'em and I saw two of my favorites today as I rode by the Snohomish Airport.
The Beaver is quite common in these parts - usually they are sporting floats though..
This lovely Beechcraft Bonanza with wingtip tanks.
I really enjoyed this ride today.

Today was just an ordinary commute, car/train/bike, round trip for the bike part about 25 miles. But I did choose to bike up Cullen Hill Rd in Lincoln. I have no idea why. I was tired from yesterday and getting up early to catch the train. Maybe that route seem faster. It sure is shorter. Or maybe it was poor judgment on my part! It's only a 156ft climb in 1/3 of a mile, average 8% grade that seems straight up. I was on the Bianchi with a load of lunch.

__________________Real cyclists use toe clips.
With great bikes comes great responsibility.jimmuller

Wow, talk about a slew of amazing photographs. You all have been to some fantastic places lately. Some of those wooded pictures remind me of a place called Cook's forest in PA.

Now, here are some very ordinary photos of mine. I'm just really happy to get so many opportunities to ride again, there was a pretty long stretch where it wasn't so easy. I'm already thinking of bike trips I can take my daughter on as she gets older. I'm learning little ways to communicate with her while we ride along, which has been fun. We usually stop at a playground or Grandparent's house mid-way through.

Today we did a hair over 20 miles. As a bonus to all this riding, my wife told me I look a little thinner.

At northbend's prompting I decided to ride up to the top of Snoqualmie Pass in the Washington Cascades this afternoon. It's been one crazy week so far with three days straight for meetings in downtown Seattle and going home in the evenings to deal with wildfire stuff.

The ride was a fantastic break - only 22 miles from where I pulled off the freeway. The road after exiting the freeway on my bike was utterly fantastic. Smooth, switchbacks, old growth forest - loved every minute of it. I took the downhill relatively easy (high 20's to mid 30's mph) since I've never gotten comfortable with the Sachs New Success brakes. I may have to do this ride every time I go to Seattle it was that much fun.

Unfortunately the photos are a little blurry - I suspect it was from sweat on the lens.

Wow, great pics southpawboston! It sure looks like great riding there! I considered riding D2R2 this year, but it would have been difficult to get sat. off from work and I'm too cheap to pay to ride.

I rode 46 miles this morning on my Kelly cyclocross. I did about 8 miles on dirt roads. The De Rosa has a slow leak in my Rally rear tire; only lasted 475 miles. I may try to fit it with vitoria pitstop for now, but I'm saving up for a pair of vittoria corsa evo cx. Hopefully next month. Until then I guess I'll give my other bikes a workout.

It was nice to ride on the 32 knobbies in the dirt. Way faster and more comfortable than the 23mm tires I've been using. Slow on the pavement though. I went down a couple of overgrown dirt roads that were once farm roads but now just double track.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about my Kelly. It rides great, with the following exceptions: I have major toe-wheel overlap which can be a problem on really tight technical riding on single track. Also I'm not crazy about the the semi-compact geometry, I have to stick out about a foot of seatpost to get the right saddle height, but it does make for a light and nimble ride. I didn't spring for the clearcoat ($100) and after 6 years my beautiful midnight blue powdercoat is peeling off like a candy coating in spots. And lastly the fork is a wet noodle that shutters terribly under hard breaking.Check out these photos from the same ride-

that rusty spot where the paint flaked off was caused by fork flex

Look at the bb shell! You can see the silver Chris Kelly used to weld the True Temper OX Platinum tubes. This bike (and to a lesser extent my De Rusta) are the motivation for my next build to have a titanium chassis in a couple of years. I'm leaning toward Merlin or Serotta at this stage of daydreaming.

*****ing aside, the bike still rides great. The shop I worked at was a dealership, so I paid wholesale for the frame and it is my own fault that I was too cheap to pay for the clear coat. Lesson learned.

I did have a chance to meet Chris Kelly when I wrenched (I did more support and encouragement than wrenching) at the MTB Nationals at Sonoma CA in 2006 for a couple of shop riders and saw his shop at Nevada City. He is a cool guy and his frames are light, subtle and responsive. I had a blast on mine last Sunday. I plan on riding it again this Sunday with even more dirt roads.